This evening the club held a photographic night to learn more about the art of photographing their own and other bonsai trees. Mark Cooper gave an overview on the general rules and guidelines on how to achieve good results and a general discussion followed on types of cameras, the use of additional light and flashes as well as colours of cloth. It was a very informative evening and fun.
There were four trees entered into tree of the month and the winning tree was a fabulous Siberian Elm.
First_Siberian Elm
Here is the Pine tree prior to being worked on by Abe Kenichi at t’Veerle Japanese Bonsai Centre in Belgium. The initial discussion on the Pine during the start of the workshop was firstly carrying out an assessment of the tree prior to working on it and deciding on the front, and in the photograph above, the tree was being showed from a back view, while the image within the photograph was considered the front view.
The S. Azalea he was working on had been pruned incorrectly historically; it appeared that it had only been worked on by tip pruning to maintain the overall aesthetic shape. Therefore the pads were not very healthy, they had lots of dead branches in the interior of them and lacked the structure required to maintain the shape long term.
If you like your Azaleas or Pines then you should have been here, there was also an inspiring display on show in the Bonsai museum, ‘t Veerle Bonsai Centre, Belgium. The trees were incredible and coupled with some top quality Koi fish on display this was a great weekend. Rene Lococq had a stand selling some of his eye-catching pots alongside a new talent competition.
Here is a brief photographic guide to a Chamaecyparis lawsoniana as a bonsai which was exhibited this year at Chelsea Flower Show.
Well it was certainly a different show. Helped by the lovely warm weather. It was a first in the UK and Europe, so was a bit of a gamble, I for one really enjoyed the day and took away so many ideas for my own collection.
Gold again at Chelsea Flower Show – well done Reg, Hon Club President and his team on the 5th gold medal on the trot. The display included three trees from other exhibitors on the FOBBS stand, all the other trees are from the Swindon Club.
Here is a brief photographic history of a Trident maple over rock (Acer buergarianum). It was originally bought as a training piece in 1996 from Ken Leaver of Windybank Bonsai and it is a combination of 5 trees fused together over the rock.
This months tree of the month was won by a Scots Pine and they owner also brought in two images of the tree in its earlier stages of development to show its progress.
